The Mana Pool

Wow, is this really the first episode we've recorded since GP Charlotte?  In that case, we'll spend a few minutes looking back at the GP.  We also discuss the whole Cockatrice thing for a couple minutes.  Brian points out that what you should be doing is don't be moving.  There's fake new babies, a list of accomplishments (Mike is a failure, sadly) and the admission that we're all tired.  Like rea...

So here it is, the long-awaited Grand Prix Charlotte episode!  Chewie is there with the digital recorder, capturing everything just after it happens!  Mike, Brian, Bill (@SqueeGoblnNabob) and JT (@NerdPop140) are basically always nearby, and Jonathan Harvell, Kevin Baldwin (@TaureanMauler) & his lovely wife Angie, and Lyall Alfred (@NewSpectrum) make guest appearances whenever they're nearby.  We...

On this episode, of course we're gonna talk about From the Vault: Twenty.  I mean, duh.  Then we go on into more esoteric topics.  A listener known as Andrew Hunt (Magnor Criol on the forums) supplied us with six 60-card casual decks to talk about.  And we do.  At great length.  These are really pretty cool.  We go over each one, poking at the pros and cons, bouncing potential modifications off of...

Wow, we talked about a LOT of stuff this week.  We handled lots of it in quickfire, lightning-round fashion and you can find the links for those down there after these paragraphs.  Doing the live episode from the Prerelease and having Prillaman on one week means we missed a fair amount of news.  So even though it's not really news anymore, we still decided to weigh in with our opinions.  Yay opini...

We're joined this episode by none other than Bryan Prillaman, one of our favorite dorks.  You know, the mossy guy formerly on Avant-Card Show and now JudgeCast.  We really love that guy.  And our own Brian got sick and died, so we had to find a replacement at the last minute.  And since it was last minute, this episode is all over the place.  We did cover a few important things though, so let's li...

Yes you read that correctly!  The dorks venture forth into the long dark of Lucky's Card Shop in Greensboro NC to bring you field reports straight from the Prerelease!  Actually it's quite well-lit in there, but that wouldn't have sounded anywhere near as cool.  But yes, Chewie brought his Tascam DR-08 recorder with him to catalogue everything we did while we were there.  Well, maybe not everythin...

We are joined this episode by a VERY special guest, Graham Stark from LoadingReadyRun!  Graham, who is a very funny fellow it turns out, hangs out with us for the first half of the episode.  We talk about what LRR is, Magic, having a real job, drafting, Magic, Gatecrash, Guilds, and more Magic.  Probably some other stuff too, it's been a while since we actually recorded this one. After Graham take...

This episode had a great many possible titles to pick from.  Here are two of the ones I didn't choose:  Five Alarm Fire, How Much Mustard Did They Have?  And that's why I love this game. We're joined this week by our old friend Bill Bloodworth, who is Kurai_Seraphim on the forums and @SqueeGoblnNabob on Twitter.  It's almost a tradition to have him here with us when preview season hits, so why cha...

This episode we are joined by none other than Dr. Science himself, Cluze!  He did a Magic Mad Lib with us, which is always fun.  Before that, we talked about a bunch of announcements and news and stuff.  No really, look at all these announcements and news and stuff we talked about!  Well, the links are down there somewhere.  I'm sure you'll find them. Then we hit the Gatecrash previews, of course....

We begin this episode short one host, but don't worry about him.  He'll show up in the nick of time.  Brian gives us his take on last episode, throwing out ideas for Hellsing seen through the lens of Magic cards.  Then he and Chewie tell us about some of their experiences with the Return to Ravnica Booster Battle Packs, or whatever they're called.  But of course, that's not why any of you are here...

Chewie got a 2013 Holiday Card!  That's the good news.  The bad news is that Brian was having technical difficulties, causing some serious feedback problems.  The majority of them were edited out, so just trust us that they were absolutely worse than you can hear.  There is also another of Brian's on-theme Magic Mad Libs.  Yay Mad Libs! But this episode is more than problems and a Mad Lib.  This o...

Man, this episode is all over the place.  We have a Cardshark promotion to tell you about, first and foremost.  If you want a shot at winning the five best planeswalkers in Standard, you should definitely pay attention.  Here's the link, in case you can't pay attention: http://www.cardshark.com/Promotions/Default.aspx Then, we hear from a Russian listener.  We've been at this a long time (over 5 y...

We are joined this week by Calvin Russell, also known as Captain Red Zone, from the Off Color Cast.  If you've ever listened to that show, you'll know that he has a tendency to sort of run off at the mouth and end up talking to himself, which is perfect for our show!  We initially brought him on to talk about battle strategies or something, and he did...at first.  It was thoroughly entertaining th...

Hey look, another live episode already!  Yeah, it turns out that the week after the week we took off due to Thanksgiving, Brian decided to go to Disney World and forget to remind us.  We determined that he was missing...about an hour or so before starting.  Since having Brian around was pretty essential for the topic we had in mind, we panicked.  Thus, I bring you the live episode we recorded just...

The latest Limited Resources, posted here because MTGCast is full, and because Marshall is such a great guy that I finally got to meet.  Also, Jon Loucks is SUPER dreamy!

We begin this episode by giving a quick rundown of the last EDH game that we played at Brian's house a few weekends ago.  It was glorious, and terrible, and bizarre, and epic, and ridiculous.  Yes, all those things.  Consecutively or concurrently, it doesn't matter.  Then we have to tell you all about the crazy first game we played that weekend.  It was not an ordinary game of Magic, and it involv...

On this episode, we end up talking a lot about Star Wars.  Yeah, Disney bought LucasArts, or LucasFilm, or whatever the big thing is named and that's what kicked it all off, but we just went on about it for way too long.  We're dorks, we can't help it.  We also did another Magic Mad Lib, because they're entirely too much fun and we can't help ourselves. Then we got into the meat of the episode.  W...

So here it is, the long-lost live episode of The Mana Pool!  Well, not so much long-lost as recorded-and-not-needed.  We recorded this way back in late June when Chewie, Mike, and Brian all got together to play some Magic.  Dirk was all up in Denver and stuff at the time.  So we played some Planechase, some EDH, maybe some other stuff?  I don't know, we're all learning this together.  There's neve...

This episode is brought to you by: Bling! We recorded this episode the night before the full reveal of Commander's Arsenal, so forgive us the lack of all the details.  I do, however, believe that most of what we discussed still applies, so just listen to the episode.  We have a nice big discussion about price points, and Commander, and greed, ballin' & flossin' and...I dunno, white people?  It's b...

As we tend to do with every Standard rotation, we're going to take a look at all the things that we won't be hearing about any more.  Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, New Phyrexia, and Magic 2012 are all gone, and that means no more Titans, Infect, Elesh Norn, Bloodthirst, Heroes, Slagstorm, Ponder, Swords, and ALL KINDS of other stuff! To help us out with this discussion, we brought on every...

Hey look, we're finally gonna talk about the Prerelease!  Oh shut up, it was worth the wait to have Squanto on episode 250 and you know it.  As you may know, ALL FOUR of the host dorks were at the Return to Ravnica prerelease!  Dirk (of all people) even did TWO!  We had Azorius, Rakdos, and Golgari represented at the one we all did together at Lucky's Card Shop in Greensboro, NC.  How'd we all do?...

Here we are at another milestone episode for The Mana Pool!  It's been almost five years since we started this little show (that's another milestone for next month), and it's been a blast!  Lots of things have changed over the years, most notably our lineup.  Originally, the show was going to be Chewie and whoever he could track down to record with him any given week.  As we went on, the lineup se...

The full set has been revealed, so we have to spend a nice long time talking about it!  You've come to expect this though, right?  All the shows out there are doing it, man.  Of course, we've been doing it longer, but that's beside the point, right? But we're not going to start out with the awesome new stuff, no no.  We have to go back to the Commander banned list update, because we missed somethi...

Yup, it's more Return to Ravnica previews!  You know it, you love it.  Or maybe you just tolerate it.  I know we do!  Here's the link: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/returntoravnica/cig# We also talked about these expensive guild shirts: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/213 And this No Shyfts comic: http://www.5colorcontrol.com/noshyft...